Customer Reviews

How to Do Everything With Your Scanner

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

David Huss is a highly skilled digital imager, and a superb communicator to boot (see my rave review of his Photoshop Elements book). This paperback is no exception - other than that the title is a misnomer that leads one to expect an overview of scanning hardware. And that it ain't! Rather, the title should have been "How To Do Everything with >>Scanned Images<<", and that the author does very well indeed. If you had hoped to learn how scanners work (not even a diagram is provided) or how to get the most scanner for your budget - forget it. Moreover, the chapter on OCR (optical character recognition) is disappointing - many words but few pearls. To add to the confusion caused by the title, this paperback also appears as a hardcover book with precisely identical title, but entirely different author (of the opposite gender yet). Having said this, Mr Huss does a fabulous job of showing you how to scan photo's properly and, better yet, how to process the resulting digital images. The final chapters on correcting & enhancing photo's, and on restoring damaged photo's, rate 5 stars, making the book well worth the modest price. If only the title had not led to expectations unfulfilled.

After having minor problems with my scanner, I went out and looked at various "how to" books -- this one beats the others hands down in termns of organizational format, content, ease to understand and depth. If you think scanners just scan, this book will teach you a few new tricks!

Before reading through this book I only used my scanner to occassionaly scan photos. After reading through this book I discovered that I can do a whole lot more and my scanner is no longer gathering dust on my desktop anymore. The author has a very friendly (often humorous) style of writing that makes you feel he is actually talking with you one-to-one. This book should be included with every scanner that is made.

This is quite possible one of the best "how to" books I have ever read. I have owned my scanner for several years and have never been able to produce anything better than a shabby reproduction, obviously attempted by someone that has absolutely no idea what to do. This book works great as either a reference or as a cover to cover read. Information is easily undrstood and thorough with step by step instructions and lots of great pictures. My ability to use my scanner has certainly improved. This book covers everything form selecting a scanner that is right for you to restoring old photos.

This book was amazing. I felt that the author really addressed the important questions I had about scanning and really taught me some cool things to do with my scanner. This book is an absolute must when buying or using a scanner, I felt that it should have been included with my scanner.

I saw this book at the library and checked it out to read. The book has a lot of chapters and topics, but doesn't go into much depth in most areas. For example, the chapter on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is 5 pages total. That includes some broad statements about how scanners do OCR, but no discussion of how to improve the processing, specific OCR software, etc.

The author seems to own PhotoSuite software (or it came with her scanner) since most examples of graphics software are presented with this package. No help with PaintShopPro, Photoshop, etc. if those are what you use.

This book may be useful to home users of scanners to add graphics to documents, retouch photos, etc. but this is NOT the book for people doing serious scanning applications. It is a misleading title that states "How to Do Everything".

This is a nice book for beginners or slightly knowledgable scanner-persons. It isn't an "everything" book, but for novices like me, it was pretty good.

This book gives a good idea of how and why to use scanners, and how they work. Very easy reading, but thorough. A bit dated, but perhaps there are revisions.
You'll also want VueScan software. It's likely better than what came with your scanner.